I'm an ordinary engineer in an upper-middle-class suburb of Denver called Highlands Ranch. It's a rather red suburb. How red? Tom Tancredo is my representative. 'Nuff said. But this is my home, and I want to see it turn blue, especially that little blue area I highlighted down there at the bottom of the map:
What's special about that blue area?
Nothing is special about it at all, as a matter of fact. Except that it's special to me because that's where I live; and that's my area.
Two months ago tomorrow, I did my first canvassing for the Obama campaign. The evening I got back, I wrote about it in a DailyKos diary, here. I did a few canvass shifts, was generally reliable, took part in a training session, and rather surprisingly was asked to be a canvassing captain for a satellite staging area. For that blue area.
Last Saturday we had a dry run, and it didn't go so hot. Our very generous host for the location was great, so was our staging location director, we set everything up and went through the motions pretty smoothly, but we only had about 5-6 canvassers out on the streets. Uh oh.
So at about 8:00 PM on Monday our staff organizer called a meeting for 8:30 PM at the new Obama campaign office, and about 15 people showed up. We all talked about how the dry run went, and ended up passing out volunteer call lists. Sigh. I hate the thought of calling, which is why I've gravitated toward canvassing. Apparently I'm also not very good at it, because in the first 47 calls I made, I only got 1 recruit. The next night though, it was better. I got a few more. It wasn't easy asking people to commit to prioritizing Obama's GOTV above spending more time with their families, doing yard work, whatever are the 1000 things that we can all fill our time with on the weekends, but I kept at it. The good news is that the other people at the meeting did too, and we got 49 volunteers to sign up for GOTV volunteering between Tuesday and Wednesday night. Thank you, everyone!
So today at 9:00 AM, about 20 people showed up and we trained them for canvassing. We got them set up and out the door, got a little more organized, and from there it was pretty much a whirlwind of focused effort for the rest of the day. The walk packs were going, going like I'd never seen them go before. Partway through the afternoon, we looked, and there were only about 4-5 left. More volunteers kept coming back, tired but happy. More new people came in. A couple of folks had to come back with their walk lists partially complete when a family issue came up. A couple other volunteers came in who only had a couple of hours, and they finished them up. Our last volunteer came in, and took our last walk packet out. Amazing.
Every street in the blue area got walked. Every house that had persuadable voters and sporadically-voting Dems got knocked. Every damn one. Here's a closeup of that little blue area to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:
And tomorrow we're going to hit them again. And Monday we're going to hit them again and hang door tags, and Tuesday, we're going to get every last Obama supporter to the polls if we have to drag them there. And that's how we're going to win this election. Even in the blue area of this red suburb.
So when a volunteer calls you up asking for help, say yes. If a volunteer has called you in the past few days and you said no, change your mind and show up anyway. If nobody has called you, and especially if you're in a swing state, just go to your local Obama office. They'll be organized enough that you'll do important work on your first shift. I've seen it. No volunteer effort is wasted. If you live near a swing state, figure out how you can drive to it to GOTV.
We can take back our neighborhoods, and our communities, and our states, and our country. But it takes everyone who cares to step a little outside of their comfort zone, to do that little extra thing that was more than they planned to do. That's how we win this thing.